Statement::
While Professor Metrick-Chen’s research reaches back into the late 19th century, she uses this history as a prelude and an introduction to her ongoing interest in contemporary culture. In trying to understand relationships in our art and society today Metrick-Chen finds it imperative to have an understanding of how we have arrived at this point. Her work follows some of the myriad threads leading to our contemporary art market, examining their role in shaping current art. Her continuing interest focuses on relationships both separating and unifying world art traditions, especially the traditions commonly referred to as “Western” and “Eastern”. She is fascinated by the overlap between the two traditions, which has consistently been a source of inspiration and insight for American and European artists.

And recently Asian arts, especially current Chinese arts, have embraced Western late modernism and postmodern, especially conceptual art – which in fact was itself inspired, directly or indirectly, by Asian arts. Visual culture’s interest in ephemerality, in spontaneity, in process more than product, and indeed in regarding the markings of artistic process as equally insightful as the representational image all have an Eastern counterpart, if not derivation. The attempt to define cultural integrity as it constantly changes and assimilates is an area that Professor Metrick-Chen investigates and analyzes. This requires her continued study of current western visual culture and its philosophical and topical underpinnings as well as demands her familiarity with contemporary art trends in eastern cultures.

•wang meng landscape [yuan dynasty]